Foreign babies lose automatic citizenship right

The children of non-nationals will no longer be entitled to automatic Irish citizenship under new legislation published today.

Justice Minister Michael McDowell said the change had been approved by 80% of the Irish people in the citizenship referendum in June.

He said: “We are proposing a fair and equitable set of arrangements for entitlement to Irish citizenship – arrangements that have the support of Irish society and enable us to acknowledge properly the contribution and commitment to Irish society that longer-term migrants make.”

When the Good Friday Agreement was approved in a 1998 referendum, it gave every child born on the island of Ireland the right to Irish citizenship.

But under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Bill 2004 published today, a non-national child will only be given citizenship if one of the parents has been lawfully resident in the country for three years out of the four years before the birth.

Asylum seekers and students from countries outside the European Economic Area cannot use their time spent in the country to claim citizenship rights for their children.

The requirement to be resident in the country for a period of time will not apply to people from Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain. Their children will be granted automatic citizenship.

Mr McDowell said the Bill was broadly similar to what the Government had proposed during the citizenship referendum.

He said he would bring forward new legislation to provide for non-nationals who wanted to work in the country on a temporary or permanent basis.

The Irish Nationality and Citizenship Bill will also eliminate the loophole which allowed for the controversial “passports for sale” scheme in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Mr McDowell said he objected to people buying citizenship when they had little connection with the State.

“The investment-based scheme is well and truly dead, and this is the final nail in its coffin,” he said.